American Candy Stores... What's the scam?

[YummySweeties]

I keep seeing these places on my high street, and in the news!

The news is implying that these stores are some kind of tax scam, but how? Surely their costs (running a high street shop) must be huge?

Well that's good news from Westminster. Let's hope they develop some effective enforcement techniques and share them with other councils. These places really are an absolute blight.

@AllThatFancyPaintsAsFair but a business who operates with a premises and buying stock etc is still visible and clearly a trading entity - money laundering in large numbers can't go under the radar hence the need to put a respectable facade on the business. They will still declare profit and loss/ pay sone taxes etc. that's the whole point of money laundering(certainly in a large scale) - to make the money earned by dirty business operations look clean and therefore be spendable. I'm sure some of the smaller 'phone case' types may not do this but there are undoubtedly larger money laundering operations that cannot escape detection and to a certain degree, are 'in the system' - in my local area there is a well knee car wash business that is known as a front business for cleaning drug money.

They're a massive business and definitely don't fly under the radar.

I was wondering this when I went to Oxford Street recently. There is a number of them all quite busy with teenagers but still can’t be making enough profit for the rents

like the luggage shops of the 90’s how much luggage do people actually buy

Thing is what they’re doing isn’t actually illegal, so would be interested to see how it develops.

Interesting. We saw these stores on a recent trip to the UK and went into one out of curiosity. We were surprised to see that they sold things that don’t exist here in the US. The products were very similar looking but there were subtle differences. My husband and I wondered if they sold the stuff that doesn’t sell in the US and it is “off-loaded” onto these stores. Everything looked similar but slightly different. I see that the reason for that is probably because it was all fake. We did wonder who would pay sich high prices for non-authentic American chocolate in the land that has Cadbury, Galaxy, etc which is much nicer than Hershey's.

I live in one of those little towns which - aside from charity shops - is pretty much entirely populated by vape shops, nail bars, fancy desert shops which are always empty and a huge number of new barber shops. Think we must live in a dodgy area !

They are being investigated for a wide range of things - potentially a business rates tax dodge that is avoiding tens of thousands in tax and folding companies before corporation tax is paid, as well as trading standard issues of counterfeit goods and possibly illegally exploiting loop hole that allows imported sweets to have higher sugar levels than otherwise allowed in the UK

Can we also consider shoezone in all of this? Something fishy is going on there too

What's wrong with Shoe Zone? Love their shoes. Wouldn't be able to afford shoes otherwise.

@PeekabooAtTheZoo nothing. I get my slippers and kids shoes there too. I'm usually the only customer though

fake sweets fil of shoot chemicals

"Full of shit chemicals" is what American candy is. Wonder how bad the fake stuff is then..